In his book Alone in China, Julian Ralph, the New Yorker, wrote in 1898 the following sentence:

“The men and women of China will live in my mind forever, here and in heaven, as the jolliest, kindest, most sympathetic and generous souls I ever found in such profusion anywhere in my roving.”

I have lived and traveled three years in China, and have found that the Chinese influence the foreigners and that the foreigners influence the Chinese, sharpening each other’s wit, and smoothing each other’s kindly humor. The jewel has many facets of view, depending on the angle of vision, and in the following I shall attempt to recall many of the angles.

Regarding the foreign custom, written of by Kipling and others, of the troubled or exiled ones of the treaty ports taking copiously to liquor for consolation, a wit remarked: “A corkscrew will never pull a man out of sorrow.”

The Manchu soldiers read little, and have been under the impression that others are like them. The “braves” on guard at the Ta Ping gate of Canton had been in the habit of extorting many a “cumshaw” from humble-looking citizens before they were allowed to go on their business. They caught a Tartar in 1910, when they seized a modern editor, who aired his complaint in his newspaper, which was read in due time by the Military Prefect Lo. What occurred between Lo and his old-fashioned braves was not reported, but the braves for many months before the revolution of 1911 saw in every passer-by an editor. Up to the time of free types, complaint had been smothered at the yamens.

Revolutionary spies had gone ahead of new appointees to distant provinces and impersonated them with a recitation of their record. In August, 1911, the Peking Gazette recited that the cabinet would in future despatch a photograph in a sealed envelope to the governors, so that “they could pick out the man who fitted the record by physiognomy as well as memory”.

Back in the 80’s the famous Szechuen pioneer, Archibald Little, dunned the ears of the Tsung Li Yamen (Foreign Board) at Peking for permission to open the whole Yangtze River from Shanghai to Chungking to steamer service. “Yes,” said the humorously evasive board at last, “you may run your steamer, but you know that a modern steamer will cut the unwieldy junks down. Therefore all sailing craft will tie up to the bank of the great river two days of each week, and give the terrible Fung-kwei (foreign) steamer full reign on the Yangtze, but on those two days of the week only. For five days of the week the steam craft must in reciprocation, tie up to the bank.” This would require weeks longer to ascend the river than could be done by tracking and sail, and Mr. Little’s plan for fast steamer service was effectually disposed of by the wily Manchu Board, which boasted that it “never denied a foreign request”.

Two trains of coolies meet, and words or a jostle precipitate a combat. After it is all over, and your men take up again the arms of your chair, you remark that although your leader’s clothes are nearly ripped off, he is laughing about it. In astonishment, you ask him why, and he replies: “You should see the fellow I tackled; he hasn’t any left.” In the country parts, if you hand a cigar to a man at an inn, he thinks it is proper manners to pass it to every one, to take a puff, just as he would do with a pipe.

The Chi Feng Pao, a native paper of Peking, reported that in the month preceding the great 1911 revolution, even the house servants of the Court had not received their wages for months, and that one morning this anonymous placard was found placed on the comptroller’s door: “Not even a shadow of our pay to be seen yet. Why?”

A Chinese merchant, who was disgusted that all his heirs died upon birth, called at a life insurance office at Tientsin, and asked if “they could insure a well and proper birth”, for if so, he would gladly take out a policy. He supposed that was what the new American life insurance meant.

A Hakka woman of the south was seldom given chicken by her husband, who complained of the expense. She obtained his permission, however, to purchase a fowl for the god in the Taoist temple. The husband came home, found his wife eagerly eating the bird, and shrieked out: “How is this? I bought it for the god, not for you.” She replied: “I offered it to the god, who ate all he could of it. I am only eating the remainder, thanks to the god, and not to you, for that.”

It is the custom for the mandarins who go into a country inn, to hang out a red card, stating that “This inn is full”. A rejected guide replied: “Rather the mandarin is full.”

I have seen a humorous drawing on a screen, which shows a cat chasing a mouse. The cat has only been able to catch a hind foot of the mouse, which keeps running, the foot lengthening in a most comical way, judging by the disgust on the face of the cat, and the laugh on the face of the mouse, which says: “That is all you get, anyway.”

“How is it that there are no one-legged men to be seen in China; do you have no accidents?” an intelligent official was asked, and he replied humorously: “Oh, yes, but as we know nothing of surgery, when a man’s leg gets in trouble, we bury the whole man.”

Some of their merry proverbs are:

“If you must beat the priest, wait till he has ended the prayer for you.”

“It’s all very well to tell the priest that you are penitent, but prove it by pennies.”

“A wheelbarrow ahead means a trail behind.”

“Man’s mouth is wider than a volcano when it comes to words.”

A sick man, sleeping fitfully, is said to be having a “raw sleep”, and correspondingly a tired or a drunken man, enjoying deep rest, is said to be having a “ripe sleep”.

It has been the custom of the French and Germans, when a missionary or an ambassador has been unfortunately assassinated, to compel the Chinese government to erect a stone arch or pailoo, with the intent of warning the nation of the wrath of the foreigner. When you ask the common people, who can not read, if the arch is “in memory of Ambassador So-and-So” they generally reply: “Oh, no, it’s to the other fellow. It’s in memory of patriot So-and-So who was executed by a coerced government for killing a forward foreigner.”

Beheading, outside of Kwangtung province, which has recently adopted modern methods, is the punishment for far too many crimes. Scores of prisoners are often beheaded together, as they kneel in a row. The Chinese loathe this method of punishment, as no good Confucian can appear in the next world with a headless body to be worshiped as a god by his descendants. They overcome the difficulty by having the head sewed on the body before it is buried. There is little to identify the almost unclothed bodies, and the Doms or coolies who are hired to perform the gruesome task sometimes get the bodies and heads mixed up, delivering the right body but the wrong head to the surprised though mourning family, which stands ready with the coffin and the identifiers. The Chinese are so possessed of humor that it is not unknown for retainers to burst out laughing at the incongruous spectacle.

“The American cost of living is nothing compared to the Chinese cost of loving,” said the demure mandarin, as he pointed to his five wives, et cetera!

Here is a story that went the rounds of Peking, regarding the equipping of the First Division. A sum exactly sufficient had been allotted by the Ping Pu (War Board). The first prince was too good a worshiper of his ancestors to let such a sum of money pass through his hands without giving the tablets their share, and he loved his women folk too much not to give them a present, and then there was his own “cumshaw” or commission, patriotism being a theory and “graft” a fact. The second prince would be quite lacking in the Li code of manners if he failed to copy the elder first prince, and so the money dwindled down the line, until the Ordnance Department was supplying wooden shells to field guns and wooden cannon to ramparts. The First Division personnel was on the list all right, but there was no money to uniform or arm them. By and by a beggar was found in tatters by the wall. An orderly hurried up, shouted, “You’re the First Division, go and sew some of your patches together, and defend Peking from the enemy; here’s your ammunition.” He handed the beggar the last penny of the appropriation. The beggar grasped the penny, ran off to the first cake stand, and as he swallowed the rice, exclaimed: “Hunger is the enemy, and I’m going to buy him off, for did not Confucius teach that diplomacy always could defeat arms?” Such then was the famous equipping of the First Division. A traveled Manchu who heard this said: “How about your American Manchus? We read your newspapers. Why don’t you foreigners make jokes about the Quay ring of Philadelphia, and the Tammany ring of old New York, when you supplied your courts with everything but justice, even to triplicate bills for undiscoverable fixtures, and quadruplicate pay-rolls for undiscovered appointees? How about that story of the lighting of the streets of your Darktown, each official taking his perquisite, so that when the last penny reached the solitary lamplighter, that worthy concluded that it was so near morning that he would go in a saloon opposite the unlit lamp, and drink up the money, letting nature furnish daylight to atone for the weaknesses of her children of the West?”

Here is a story altered to suit any circuit in China. A stern mandarin got the name of the “Old Devil”. One day, ahead of his escort, he reached his inn, where quarters had been engaged for him. On attempting to walk into the best room, the inn-keeper, who did not know him, strenuously objected, explaining that the room was reserved for “the Old Devil himself”, and woe betide them all if the engagement was not respected. When his escort came up, the mandarin had the inn-keeper flogged for daring to speak disrespectfully of a judge who was a dignified “father and mother” of the people, and at the same time handed the man a handful of coins as a reward for keeping faith with the said mandarin.

The coolies take some of their metaphors from their dirty inns. When a fellow acts impulsively they say: “A louse is loose in his thoughts” or “a flea has found his brain.”

A conductor of a Chinese railway running out of Canton had his difficulties both with the English language, and possibly with certain English or American sailors on a holiday. He pasted up this notice in his coach: “Small piecee bags onlee. Shaky head, shaky tongue, crazee men, no can attain. Dirtee men must not smelee. Sick men more better die, and go freight. Onlee Number One passenger can attain this car.”

Quick transportation is not appreciated in every guild in China. In Ichang the “loata” (captain) of a Yangtze gorge junk objected to the proposed railway to Wan Hsien. As an object lesson he was asked how long it took him to take a cargo to Chungking, and he replied twenty days. When he was told that a railway could deliver it in a day, he asked with a grimace, half between a sneer and a smile: “What would my men and I do with the other nineteen days?”

Yunnan, the capital of the great southwest province, was the first city of China, under the progressive Viceroy Li Chin Hsi, to erect a sanitary modern prison, with workshops, commissary, etc. Yunnan, though an extremely rich province in minerals, is so mountainous that the people, who live on agriculture, are reduced to great poverty, and are in constant slavery to oppressive landlords who are really foray chiefs. Now that the comparatively palatial prison has been erected, there is a rush to commit life-sentence crimes, so that the boarders may be sure of a fine bed, good food, medical care, personal security, and interesting work in the various workshops for the rest of their happy lives, as compared with the unbearable penury and danger of their lives among the hills. The Miaos, Lolos, Shans, and Chinese of Yunnan know a good thing when they see it, and penology is a fad which is spreading like a fire among their mountain terraces at present.

Here is a story of merry days at Peking. The legation ladies had informed the Manchu princess that she must be modern since the Dowager Empress Tse Hsi had decreed it; that she must learn English, music and dancing. As it was the trend of the hour, the suggestion was accepted. The Manchu learned various things. It came to be her duty in time to receive a delegation of earnest missionary ladies, to whom she was ready to prove that she was modern, and had received the foreign branding. “I know modern American hymn; national anthem of great flowery flag country; hail to America. I will sing it and I will dance it.” She danced it and she sang it, and here is what the horrified missionary ladies heard Madame Manchu Innocence thrill: Waltz Me Around Again, Willie.

“With butter at fifty cents a pound and eggs at fifty cents a dozen in your honorable country, I should think you’d move the piano out, and move the cow and hens into your best room so as to be sure of the precious creatures,” said a Chinese economist, who was reading the last American paper at the Hankau guild, and who was satisfied with three cents a dozen for his eggs.

The tea-tasters employed are all foreigners, and it is essential that the taster shall abstain from liquors and tobacco. When the first man among them is seen at the bar in a foreign club at Canton or Hankau, it is a surer sign than the calendar that July 1st is around again.

Mencius relates the story of a thief who, when apprehended, promised that if he was not punished, he would gradually reduce his peculations until he reached the stage of honesty; that it was cruelty to stop him short; that as he had been used to the privilege so long, he did not know any other way in which to gain his livelihood. If Grover Cleveland were living he might say that this Chinese was the first attorney for the tariff, and its progeny. The humorous pirate, who infests Kwangtung province waters near Hongkong, seldom kills his victims now, as he has as effective a way of escape with the loot, while the helpless bark drifts at the mercy of the waves to the wonder of the foreign navigator, who afar off spies its strange actions because of the unmanned rudder. Lately at Mui Shah, a swift snake boat pulled up in the darkness alongside a slow-sailing junk, which was boarded. After robbing the crew, the pirates battened them down beneath secured hatches, and made good their escape, smiling at their aptitude in carpentry.

It is well known that Chinese doctors are only rewarded for cures and for keeping their patients well. A physician was called in to see a sick tax-collector (yamen runner). “You’ll have to call in another doctor,” said the physician. “Am I so bad that you must have a consultation?” inquired the alarmed patient. “No. You will remember, however, if you have as good a memory as I, that last week you searched high and low and taxed me the last cash on the limit of my property and maximum income. I have too much conscience to kill you, but I’m honest enough to say that I want as little as possible to do with curing you, so good-by.”

There are more Chinese Macks and Mc’s in Canton and Hongkong than in all Argyleshire, Scotland. I recall a particularly droll character, Mak, who was our godown-man at West Point, Hongkong. Mak (we never called him his personal name, which was Fun) was in full charge of the warehouse, and came to the office twice a month with proper accounts, which always checked up with the yearly inventory. When, by appointment, I went down to supervise that inventory, all was as it should be. Mak had a clean warehouse, in which neither rats nor coolies were tenants, and his wharf was kept free of junks and sanpans. I returned unexpectedly one day and found Mak collecting wharfage for himself from junks which he had allowed to tie up at the wharf, and rent from coolie families whom he had allowed to camp, with possibly their plague BacillariaceÆ, between the aisles of gunny bales in the godown. Longfellow speaks of “folding their tents like the Arabs and silently stealing away,” but on this occasion, the retreat of the enemy with their camp paraphernalia was accomplished with both confusion and noise, because of the haste involved. “How is this, Mak?” I shouted as a stern typan should. “Oh, cousins overnight, you sabee; plenty bobbery, but Confucius says, shelter your kin,” Mak blandly replied. I made him assure me that they were all sailing for parts known or unknown on the morrow, but I knew that if I caught them there again, they would be “other cousins” who had claimed hasty hospitality under the same law and the same necessity. There was only one way to match the blandness of Mak Fun, or any other godown-man, and that was to move in myself. As Mak was in other respects a good godown-man, I was blind in the port eye thereafter to this adaptation of the “cumshaw” by the clan of Chinese Macks, though as I passed, to quote from the same verse of Longfellow’s poem, “the night was filled with music” in Chinese Mak’s direction.

The Chinese accept the saddest thing in the world in a droll cheerful manner. A son, who had grown prosperous in Hongkong, sent his father, who lived in the silk district outside of Canton, a splendid lacquered coffin, which he was to keep before him in the best room for friends to see. The son’s letter said: “Here is something gorgeous for The Event” (that is, his father’s death).

The North China Herald gives the following as a sample of a Chinese boy’s request upon his employer for a recommendation, after he had been discharged by the officious butler: “Before I have leaved here the services, was troubled by here butler. He squeezes (steals), lies, and makes private of anythings, and also he said wrong of my bad conducts as a rascal. He discharged me for his brother in secret. After that you lost things which are determined in my brain. Now I beg you to request of Missy (the employer’s wife) which as possible as you can. But I am unliking at there Master to do anythings, I am much obliged to come to my new place under of your charges (recommendation) and beg you to bless me as boy or coolie business for my content at all, or please you to commence the any other places you know of. So I hope you to grant me a good report, for I am beg it to you on knees. Shall be much obediently and obliged. Address me to here as ‘No. 2 boy’. I remain, Sir, That obedient coolie servant, etc.”

For centuries there has been an amusing burglary insurance system and a droll code of courtesy between watchmen and robbers in China. If you do not wish to run the risk of being robbed, you pay the Head Thief, or Chief of the Robber Beggars, a fee, and he protects and insures you from loss and annoyance. Your watchman pounds his drum to show you that he is earning his salary, and at the same time to let the thief know where the watchman is, so that he may operate in safety if the owner has not taken out the usual insurance.

A coolie urged his cousin “for ten thousand reasons” not to go into the foreigner’s church, where the powerful orator was “sending people who stole to hell.” He was fully convinced that if no one spoke over him the dreadful words of objurgation, he could steal and run no chance of going to the inferior regions. In ignorantia salus! On the subject of compressed feet, here is the Oriental side: “It’s fear, not modesty, that denies you white men more than one wife,” said the Chinese joker. “You equip your women with first-class feet, and they are as strong and swift as your men. What would one lone man do in a retreat before many claimants?”

There is a law prohibiting fortune-tellers soliciting on the streets. The Hongkong Telegraph writes that a fakir is standing at a hotel door, desiring to peer into the future of the passers-by. The paper, with its usual wit, suggests that an officer of the law should peer into the fakir’s immediate future!

The same paper coins this aphorism: “We never know how many friends we have till we don’t need them; or how few friends we have till we need them.”

A motor truck was rushing by with a load of empty barrels. “Nothing can stop them,” suggested the admiring Chan. “Nothing but corks,” replied the punnist Choi.

The Oriental has seized on Billiken, with the exaggerated mosquito-bite on his bald head, his elongated cranium, his wolf’s ears, comedian’s smile like DeWolf Hopper’s or Coquelin’s, his elephant’s feet, Buddha’s barrel-stomach, and monkey’s arms, as the god of western wealth, humor, or what-not. The idiot idol, warming his enormous feet, is installed before many a footlight of burning tapers and punk-sticks in the shrines of eclecticism in both Taoist and Buddhist China.

To show that hygiene is not fully understood yet in China, which is so anxious to learn, they tell this story. A European passenger in a coast-wise steamship, who had to share his room with an Oriental who had been modernized too quickly, found the latter using his tooth-brush in the morning ablutions. “You blankety son of the sun, that’s MY tooth-brush,” exclaimed the disgusted Occidental. “Me bow low for pardons; me thought it was ship’s tooth-brush,” apologized the Oriental.

The witty Hongkong Mail (was the veteran Murray Bain or the scholarly Reed the author?) explained to the fellow into whose nog glass an ancient egg was deposited by the Chinese boy that it wasn’t the fault of the Cathayan hen, but the fault of the administrators of her estate.

A visitor chided a Hongkong volunteer with the sounds of revelry which proceeded from one quarter of the camp, and a wit connected with the local Press shot out this repartee: “Oh, I know Ancient and Honorable Military Companies where you come from, whose strategy is greatest on the canteen, whose night attacks are mostly on the bottle, and whose field-glass is a wine glass.”

The Happy Valley Cemetery trustees at Hongkong were arguing over the prices of graves. One wit defended the resolution before the board by saying: “A man only dies once in the East, and surely can afford the luxury of a high-priced grave.”

The astrologer complained of thieves robbing his house. “You’re an infallible astrologer, aren’t you?” inquired the judge. “Yes, indeed,” replied the soothsayer. “Well, why didn’t you foretell the advent of the thieves?” remarked the droll mandarin. Tableau!

Said the ignorant but successful man of enormous paunch to the caustic wit: “I have no use for a man whose head is so big that he has to scratch his hair away out here.” “Nor I,” said the wit, “for the little-brained hog who has to button his vest away out here.”

The Chinese poor sleep in the open—the Great Unroofed—generally on their backs against a pillar or wall, with their knees drawn up. A new mission hospital gathered in the sick, the lame and the blind, who were sweetly tucked in soft clean beds, under sheets, and commended to their lullabies. In the morning the staff came upon an amusing sight. Every patient had dropped out of bed, and was sleeping in the tried and true, good old fashion against the bed post on the floor. All they would say was: “Me no sabee new fashion.”

The patient missionary at last reminded John that it was all right to eat rice “on him” and get hospital treatment, but that there was a little card which he had signed promising to be a regular contributor as well as a benefiting member of the organization. John wrote: “My venerable Rev.: Blushed am I to have been reminded of my forget in worshipping and offering. Here I enclose my apology and the sum you like if I am right in making out your multiply. Your spoiled lamb.”

Many nations have been credited with this witty repartee, and the Chinese are included in the list. The Hongkong merchant prince was showing his mountain palace, his tennis courts, his stable, his automobile, possibly his flying machine, his billiard table, his bowling alley, etc., to the Solon from Canton. “You see that when we British devote ourselves to pleasure, we do it regardless of expense.” “Rather,” replied the Chinese, whose relaxation was of a gentler kind, such as walking in gardens, and flying birds and kites, “I should say you devote yourself to expense regardless of pleasure.”

Solomon came to humorous judgment when two women of First Kings brought their case before him, and Lord Kitchener is credited with a grim humor in dealing with the Arab sheiks who wanted to enlist in the war against Italy. Here is Chinese humor of the same sort. All of the mandarin’s staff at his new station thought they would embarrass him by applying for promotions. Granted with gusto! Every one’s position was advanced one grade, but the salaries were all reduced one grade at the same time owing to retrenchments needed.

A freshman of Queen’s College, writing of the popularity of Sir Matthew Nathan, the indefatigable British governor of Hongkong, who died from exposure in the 1900 typhoon, said: “He is a very common man.” He, however, meant common in the Scriptural sense that the heroic governor’s fame was common to all.

Chinese women are short and soft as compared with the larger and stronger foreign women seen in the treaty ports. A Chinese student satirist, who had served as a house boy in San Francisco, thus described in an essay his former American mistress and her daughters: “The Americaness is open air breather, consequently her meat is harder than Chinese (he meant her muscle). In a dangerous melancholy acting, the young Americaness quickly traps her sorrow husband who comes to pity, but soon runs to grieve in divorce when loving voice of Americaness recovers from coyness. Bud of romance early frosted makes scandal column of paper, which is best advertising much sought and read like dog in manger by all actress without job. Cold ethics of Chinese woman in comparison sprouts not too quick ruin, consequently wears better. Americaness system much exciting is open-air theater for all to laugh and read as run. Americaness never reaches next birthday, consequently always fresh and sweet like comquat in syrup; but American poet says: ‘Beware, some sweets do cloy, but food is good each day.’ I think then China wife is like food, if plain, always satisfying, and fills the bill, as American Zoo keepers say. American man and Chinese man believe womans should go slow; consequently Americaness wear hobble skirt like lasso on ankle, and Chinese woman bind foot. Both mens take no chances, and exchange mutual wink. However, Chinese woman and Americaness woman, is both queenesses of talk—when once begun then heroes run. Talk then is kingdom of womens called Suffragetia, where mans sees finish and casts his weapons in humble dust.”

Describing life among his friends, the bell-boys at the Shanghai hotels who have frequently to answer calls for a B.&S. after a bath, another wit said: “The guests are ringing (wringing) wet in two spellings.”

Was this Oriental a flatterer of womankind, or a droll cynic regarding mankind? The wife of the missionary asked the native pupil to translate our maxim: “Out of sight, out of mind,” and he rendered it into these characters: “Your husband is insane when he is away from you.” Another boy wrote it: “The angels are crazy.”

At the Chinese Club a scholarly Chinese traveler warned me to follow the Royal Hongkong Golf Club’s motto, “Festina lente” (make haste slowly), in dwelling upon the wonderful traits of the Chinese, and he related the following humorous story: “In your country an enthusiastic missionary, daringly stimulated by the applause of his audience, put wonder upon wonder, Pelion on Ossa piled, in describing the vicarious virtues of the Chinese, by saying: ‘Yes, dear children, lives are cheap in China. I knew a man there who made his living by selling himself to the executioners to take the place of those condemned to death.’”

Here is a tale of facetiousness and evasion. A wag, whose appearance was against him, called at a prison, and held this dialogue with the clerk: “Is the mandarin in?” “No.” “Is the deputy in?” “No.” “Is the jailer in?” “No.” “Is the bamboo-wielder in?” “No.” “Oh, say, are the prisoners in, Mr. No-No-No?”

One of the modernized officials labeled his friend’s book of personal press flatteries, “The Pursuit of Egotism.”

The well-known Bankers’ Association of Tokio is called the “Eel Society”. I asked my Chinese friend for his interpretation of this, and he explained: “Because they are as slippery in the grasp of their Diet as is your Money Trust in the hands of Congress.” He further told me that they call the administration papers which say that “everything is lovely and the goose hangs high”, “official frogs”, because they only know one note, and one sets the others going on the same old thing.

Two wags met on the street of the Shansi Bankers’ Guild, Peking. One wore a sour and the other a comical expression. The cynic clenched his fist at the teak-barred windows of one bank, and with a wry face exclaimed, “I don’t know how he’s giving it away, but I do know how he got it.” The other, holding out the hush-money of a silver sycee bar, and pointing to a banker’s residence across the road, answered: “I don’t know how he got it, but I happen to know how he’s giving it away.”

A popular Chinese restaurant bears the legend of “The Quiet Woman”, and the caricature shows a standing woman, whose decapitated head lies at her feet, and wears at last, before her triumphant husband, a defeated expression. The double humor is that henpecked men may safely come to this restaurant, and enjoy that quiet and retirement which home does not afford.

The humorist tells of a stutterer who held up an old friend, and clinging to his pajama-frog (for pajamas are outside and not inside clothes in old-style China), said: “If-f-f-f-f y-y-you h-have an hour I’d l-l-like to h-have a m-m-minute’s c-conversation with you.”

Athletics of all sorts, except Rugby football, are popular at China’s best technical school, Pei Yang University at Tientsin. English is used for all lectures except, of course, Chinese classics. The subject of establishing a debating class or a Rugby football team came up, and a professor who defended the former said that “he preferred a man who could stand on his feet and make his head work to one who could stand on his head and make his feet work”.

A rich brute went to meet his victim whom he had impoverished. He jeered, so as to break his spirit as he had done to his estate: “My! what a come down; what poor clothes.” Quick as a flash from the never-say-die man came the repartee: “Yes, I expected to meet you, but you should see me on ordinary days.”

The practical joker has visited romantic Macao. They tell this story of the Portuguese SÉ Mission Cathedral. The Macao women are short, and the fonts of holy water are placed too high on the wall for them to look into. The devil was put into the sacred waters by the bad boy, the devil this time being crabs, which unseen, nipped the fingers of the superstitious women as they searched high up for the soothing blessing.

The naming of the Chinese servants on board ship, in mess, hong, office or godown, has presented many a difficulty, and the civilian is more inconsiderately humorous than the missionary, especially when his help changes often, as is the case in Hongkong. Numbers instead of names are generally used. “Number Two piecee cook” is what you would say if you desired the second cook called. “Number One piecee topside boy” is what your wife would say if she desired the first up-stairs chamber boy called. There are no chambermaids. Where a woman is employed, she serves only as an amah; that is, mother-nurse, or mother-maid. In the irreverent messes and barracks, some of the men name their servants after some personal distinction or appearance, such as “The Tall One”; “One Eye”; “Melica”, because he told you that he had once sailed on a ship for America; “Jesus man”, because he told you he got converted at a mission school and preferred the name; “Governor boy”, because he was once a servant in the governor’s yamen. Sometimes the messes christen their servants according to their favorite political leaders in America or England: “Loosy Velly” is, of course, Roosevelt; “Blyan” is Bryan; “Wheel Sun” is Wilson; “Salls Belly” is Salisbury; “Loy Jo” is Lloyd George, and one boy rejoiced in the name of “Jimmy de Blaney” (Blaine). Hundreds of these silent servants are moving about the dining-room of the palatial Hongkong Club at tiffin (lunch) time, yet you will not hear a footfall, as they wear felt-soled shoes. Perhaps they are as silently giving you and me numbers, instead of names, in Chinese. Indeed, I know they do, and would be ashamed to tell my tourist friends that some of them are soon known as “Wigglety Walk”; “Always Shout”; “Fool Laugh”; “Pig Eye”; “Wine Face”; “Wine Whiskers” (red beard); “Buddha’s Belly” (stout); and when women attract them, “Tea Flower” (pale one); “Buddha’s Mother” (a sweet matron); “Flowery Flag” (American); “British Queen”; “Snow Flower” (Canadian), etc.

Kipling, Archibald Little, Price Collier and others have written that some men sometimes drink hard east of Suez. The writer himself in a former book related the bravery of a famous 11 A.M. Cocktail Brotherhood in the blazing stifling Orient, and two world-known knights of the pen took him to tournament to break a lance because of it. One witty evening an old hand on the club veranda admitted the soft impeachment, and gave himself and some others medals for the dangers he had passed in these words of Cicero in the immortal “Murena” oration: “If Asia does carry with it a suspicion of luxury, surely it is a praise-worthy thing, not never to have seen Asia, but to have lived temperately in Asia.” Ah! we who had weathered many a storm, sighed, and in bravery ordered one more, drinking not to the habit, but to the wit. As Archibald Little, veteran of the East, said, the tea-tasting season was over, and a mile-stone should be set to mark it!

A droll Chinese boy brought his fast running watch to Gaupp’s jewelry store on Queen’s Road, Hongkong. On being asked to explain as best he could what seemed to be the trouble, the Celestial rolled up those expressive eyes of his, which must move the gods, as they always do men, to laughter: “Oh, he too muchee to-mollow (to-morrow); you jerk back to to-day.”

“We have come here to stay,” boasted a corps of the enemy, which took up an advanced position. “Yes, they stayed,” replied doughty General Li Yuen after the battle, and his grim smile explained that they stayed as dead bodies.

Yen Tsz, an eminent premier of the Tsi principality, and a contemporary wit with Confucius, referring to the increase of crime which called for the punishment of the amputation of feet, used this ironical phrase: “False feet are cheaper than shoes these days in our market-place.”

The humor of war is grim. Shortly before Confucius’ day the prince of Tsu State had overcome the army of Tsin State. The dead lay in heaps. The Tsu prince was asked if he would not order a tablet raised over the brave enemy. “Not much,” said he, “I will have a tablet to my own ancestors raised over them, giving thanks that we do the crowing instead of them this time.”

A fireman on the new Canton-Hankau railway made out his report of a regrettable fatality in a collision as follows: “The engineer was died without senses.”

A consolidation of three formerly independent samshu liquor dealers of Canton advertised as follows: “This three rice bier dealers, before separate, is now amalgamated for quite economic, and glad with much public order for oblige soled more cheap to foreign friends.”

On a landing in a curio store, popular with foreigners, was the following sign: “Peoples alighted here go down stairs if curious wishing.”

A penitent convert wrote his mission school teacher as follows: “Many thoughts of unpleasant come into my mind. Many tears drop my spiritual soul not to speak of outside eyes. I break my beautiful promise. I contemps the difficults but was mistake. I was failed that time to finish the very good of God which begunned. Deep repents of my throat is blocked thickly in bearing regrets for everlasting, but I standing for your forgive and excuse of God like poor Peter in three times with handkerchief on shame face and water eyes.”

Just as humorously confused is the attempt of nine-tenths of the foreigners to make themselves understood in Chinese. Sometimes the efforts of our missionaries and translators reach the old book-shops, and are promptly thrown with a smile, which is more humorous than cynical in these days of humor and enlightenment, into the compartment entitled: “Second Hand Religion.”

I asked my Chinese friend why their ideograph for two friends was two pearls, and he explained: “Because each is equally precious, without the possibility or necessity of being exactly alike.” Let this answer for a picture of America and China as the new days dawn on each side of the Pacific. A Tientsin shop seems to have grasped satisfactorily the situation, its sign reading: “All languages spoken: American understood.”

The many thousand ideograms of the Chinese language are memorized, and words are often tabulated for the pupil by rhyme. They have no alphabet and therefore can never use a linotype or typewriter. The Chinese, accordingly, have wonderful memories, but their memory-method sometimes places them in humorous situations. English is now required in nearly all the new Chinese schools, though the Chinese mandarin examiners know little about the language as yet. A confident Chinese candidate appeared before the board of a Kwangtung province school as an applicant for the position of “Professor of English”. “How much English do you know?” profoundly inquired the mandarin from behind his heavy, tortoise-rimmed glasses. The amusing reply was: “Numbers, one to ten; a hundred words beginning with ‘A’, and ten words rhyming with sing.” The Chinese board accepted the Chinese teacher of English for want of a better man. The new Chinese are eminently a business race, and therefore, in their excellent business judgment, the day will come when they will be compelled to throw away their ideographs so as to avail of the business facilities of our alphabet-typewriter and linotype. The present Chinese ideograph case in a printing office has thousands of ideograph types, and it is a sadly humorous sight on a hot day in humid South China to see a Chinese typesetter darting about the room like a dragon-fly, trying to meet the editor’s demand for an “extra.”

The carriages of a funeral procession rolled along the maloo of modernized Shanghai. The mourners in the first carriage played cards and laughed. Every one else in the procession joked and smiled. I asked my Chinese humorist to explain the astonishing incongruity and he replied: “Why shouldn’t everybody be happy when everybody is deeply satisfied? Hop Long’s enemies believe that he has descended below to get at last the many punishments that are coming to him, and Hop Long’s friends just as confidently believe that he has ascended on high to receive his richly merited rewards; therefore, you see, all are joyful.”

The landlord made an agreement with the tenant that when the rice was harvested, he should receive one-third. Harvest was long past in its pale and sickle moon, and the landlord, receiving nothing, accosted the tenant: “Look here, thou Choi, didn’t we make an agreement that I should receive one-third of that rice?” Choi, nothing daunted, replied: “Yes, Laoye, but there was no third; there were only two baskets of rice and they are both mine.”

Two Chinese youths were discussing their ambitions. One said: “When I grow up I want to belong to a theatrical company.” His brother replied: “Humph, not I. I want the theatrical company to belong to me.”

The Chinese do not raise milch cows or goats. The following aged milk joke accordingly has been trotted out before every mess table of Treaty Port China, and been made to blush as a novice for the entertainment of every griffin. It seems that the new China hands insisted on having fresh milk in their tea. For the sake of peace the Number One boy at last procured it. The new hands said: “Of course it’s not like the June grass milk at home, but it will do in a pinch.” The Number One boy smiled blandly. At last the milk ceased and the new hands demanded an explanation, which the Number One boy gave as follows: “No molo milkee; that piecee olo pig have now got litter of lil pigs; that piecee bucket whitewash now makee finish.”